Collapsed motor mount?

[CarlF]

While I do lots of my own engine work, I always get a yard to do alignment. And not some boatyard kid. I ask around to find the most experienced guy who’s been doing it for decades. Invariably he gets down into the bilge and grumbles “Who f*cked this up”

The problem is that one alignment problem creates others. 10 year old mounts that have sagged may wear out the cutlass bearing or even rub on the stuffing box scoring the shaft. If you just replace the mounts you may not be able to get a good alignment because of the other issues.

 

[CharlieO.]

Removed the shaft with the prop. Everything came apart fairly easy. I expected to shaft to drop or at least be able to moved into the center of the packing once uncoupled from the transmission. The shaft only dropped maybe an 1/8” from the coupling to transmission flange. I couldn’t manually center the shaft in the packing once it was free of the coupler. It was still a bit high.

 

[Marty4]

Looking at the 2nd photo. Is the stringer under the mount wood or Hollow structural steel? Zooming in, it looks like there is a bulge in the side and a bit of the collapse in the top making me thing that it may be hollow structural steel or some type of steel arrangement. If this is the case this would need to be addressed before installing a new mount. Maybe i'm seeing something that's not actually there. Just looks strange to me when I zoom in.

 

[CharlieO.]

Looking at the 2nd photo. Is the stringer under the mount wood or Hollow structural steel? Zooming in, it looks like there is a bulge in the side and a bit of the collapse in the top making me thing that it may be hollow structural steel or some type of steel arrangement. If this is the case this would need to be addressed before installing a new mount. Maybe i'm seeing something that's not actually there. Just looks strange to me when I zoom in.

Thanks for taking a look Marty, the motor mounts are on a substantial timber beam that are through bolted to the solid stringer. Each spot the motor mount is mounted is a slight swoop down, I believe from original. Each said spot is too uniform, in my opinion, to have happened due to compression of the wood. I do need to check the bolts that hold the timber to the stringers though, thanks for the reminder.